"An individual
is deemed "affiliated" with any individual or entity that has
been, or will be, financially or materially supporting that
individual's participation in a particular IEEE standards
activity. This includes, but is not limited to, his or her
employer(s) and any individual or entity that has or will have,
either directly or indirectly, requested, paid for, or otherwise
sponsored his or her participation."

The use of the term "SIG affiliation" is incorrect (according to the
current bylaws) unless the SIG is financially or materially
supporting the individual's participation. The definition does not
include the activities that might occur in a SIG (or any other
meeting of individual experts), such as "informing", "influencing",
or "providing a platform to refine submissions".

<flippancy style="far-fetched" lang="usa">If we had to declare
every organization that had an influence on how we make decisions as
individual experts, I'd have to cite Mrs Bishops grade 2 class,
where I first really understood math).</flippancy>

IEEE SB-Bylaws 5.2.1.5 says "Failure to disclose
every such affiliation(s) may result in complete or partial loss
of rights to participate in IEEE-SA activities." and I expect
that participation includes participation in discussion.

However, I don't think we should start requiring people to
disclose SIG affiliations. It would be unwieldy significant
extra housekeeping to track. There are many SIGs (or similar
things under other names like MSAs) that have coexisted with
our standards work without creating dominance issues.

Thanks for
the reference to RFC 7282. It was an
interesting read, as are most IETF
documents of this type. My conclusion
was it said in more words what the ISO
definition attempted to boil down to a
single sentence. Both approaches are
valuable.

The
question of SIGs is a tough one. On one
hand, I don’t believe IEEE 802 should
attempt to restrict free association or
private discussions, either at the bar
or in a more formal SIG setting. On the
other hand, I would really like to know
about the details of any discussions
between other parties if they are going
impact consensus building in IEEE 802.

So I looked
for a pragmatic “happy medium” that
allows free association, but requires
the existence of the association to be
known, at least at a level consistent
with current practice related to
affiliations . The best I can come up
with is that:

·(status
quo) IEEE 802 operates a consensus
building process as described in RFC
7282, or as defined by ISO

oThis should
mean anyone who has good technical
arguments has any issues addressed by
the group

·(status
quo) Participants are required to reveal
affiliations as a mechanism to avoid the
worst excesses of domination

oThose
participants who are unwilling to reveal
affiliations are technically required to
withdraw from the discussion; this is
usually of most relevance to consultants
who have signed an NDA

oNote: we do
not require participants to reveal the
details of discussion with their
affiliations

·(extension
to the status quo) Participants are
required to reveal participation in
formal SIGs to avoid the worst excesses
of domination, similar to affiliations

oThose
participants who are unwilling to reveal
affiliations should be required to
withdraw from the discussion; this will
be of most relevance to participants in
SIGs where there are signed NDAs

oWe should
not require participants to reveal the
details of discussions within the SIGs,
although in many cases they will want to
do so to make a technical case as part
of discussions towards consensus

oNote: I
would define a “formal SIG” as any
organisation based on any “formal
(written or verbal) agreement”

You noted a
potential problem if participants do not
reveal their participation in a SIG
because they do not speak at the
microphone. I agree that this is a
potential problem. However, as you also
note, we have various mechanisms to deal
with this if necessary in the context of
affiliations, including recorded votes .
I also note that in the 802.11 O&M
(and probably others too) , a
requirement of attendance credit is that
one records their affiliations. We could
extend this requirement to include
participation in SIGs.

I think we will agree that
the goal of IEEE-SA is forming
consensus. It is worthwhile at this
point quoting the definition of
consensus (ISO defn)

General
agreement, characterized by the
absence of sustained opposition to
substantial issues by any important
part of the concerned interests and by
a process that involves seeking to
take into account the views of all
parties concerned and to reconcile any
conflicting arguments

My (our!) personal
experience with ISO makes it somewhat
less of an authority to appeal to. I'd

rather point to RFC 7282
which I invite you to read, but the
actual definition of consensus is not

germane to this.

The nice thing
about this definition is that it means
the achievement of consensus by IEEE 802
is completely independent of any
discussions that occur outside IEEE 802.
The key for consensus from IEEE 802’s
perspective is that as long as
individuals within the IEEE 802 have an
opportunity to expresssustained
opposition to substantial issuesand there is
aprocess
that involves seeking to take into
account the views of all parties
concerned and to reconcile any
conflicting arguments, there is no
need to worry about any decision making
processes outside the IEEE 802. The
bottom line is that IEEE 802 doesn’t
need to worry about agreements like NDAs
between companies, it just needs to make
sure the processes within the IEEE 802
promote consensus as defined above.

The issue about NDAs is
that there is something secretive going
on there and there is no reason

consensus building needs
secrecy. So the fact that there's an NDA
means that something else

besides consensus building
is going on and that is the problem. So
I would emphatically disagree

with you that "IEEE 802
doesn't need to worry about agreements
like NDAs." Yes they do. They

most certainly do.

The fact that there's an
NDA between companies in a formal SIG
means that IEEE 802 cannot

ensure the process promotes
consensus!

That said, I
believe IEEE-SA has already established
a precedent by requiring individual to
declare affiliations, presumably as a
way of guarding against the risk of
block voting. I note that IEEE 802 does
not require individuals to reveal
details of any discussions with their
affiliations. Using this as an analogy,
there might be a case to require
individuals to declare any association,
either directly or through their
affiliations, with organisations that
have at least a partial purpose of
discussing or influencing IEEE 802
standards developments. An organisation
could be defined as any entity formed by
formal agreement of any sort.

Affiliation only needs to
be declared when speaking at the mic or
if there is a recorded vote.

Interestingly,
this would probably include the Wi-Fi
Alliance, and many other similar ITAs,
which just makes the whole idea of
declarations incredibly complex and
unwieldy. Maybe we shouldn’t bother and
just focus on making sure IEEE 802 (or
IEEE-SA) provides an environment that
encourages true consensus. Hmmmm!

Actually, no, it would
not include Wi-Fi Alliance because Wi-Fi
Alliance is not in the business of

Regarding
a need to declare if you are
participating in a SIG, if we were to
make that requirement, we would also
need a definition of a SIG. Does
anybody want to propose one?

IMHO
this is not trivial, as there is a
continuum of formality and
inter-dependency, that goes from one
extreme of two people meeting in a bar
to solve a problem raised in a task
group earlier that day to the other
extreme of an incorporated legal entity
with NDAs and member agreements.

And,
please remember, what we care about is
(potential) dominance. Two people
meeting in a bar are unlikely to
dominate unless there are three in their
task group. Two people meeting
secretly under NDA likewise.

So
perhaps any definition should not relate
to the character of the SIG, but its
potential impact on a task group, which
can be measured in size of membership
relative to the activity they are
contributing to.

Adrian, thanks for
drafting this document. They highlight
how difficult it is to recognise
dominance and differentiate it from
reasonable behaviour

Paul, you commented, "In
my opinion, as long as the group of
individuals working on building
consensus are open and transparent
in their activities, it probably is
OK".

·Are you proposing that
anyone participating in a formal (or
informal) SIG be required to declare
that in the same way we require
company affiliations to be declared?
If so then I agree because it is just
as important to know SIG affiliations
as company affiliations. Indeed,
possibly more so because SIGs have the
potential of being much bigger than
companies in terms of voting members.

·Are you proposing that
the activities of the SIG be open and
transparent? If so then I disagree
because this would deny free
association. If you went down this
path then you would also need to
require intra company discussions be
made open and transparent. I think you
will agree that is impractical, as
well as unacceptable.

Thank you for drafting
this document, it is a good mechanism
to stimulate discussion on an
extremely (impossibly?) difficult to
measure, highly subjective topic.

I haven't seen any of our
EC colleagues way in yet -- perhaps my
comments will help get the comments
flowing.

My high level comments
are as follows:

1) We should try to
define and separate "signs" from
"evidence". In my mind, "evidence" is
something that has documented proof of
occurrence (e.g., motion vote
tallies). A "sign" is behavior a
group chair (or

participant) observes (it
may be documented by the observer).

2) In your Notes column,
the potential explanations for the
observed behavior have negative
connotations. In some (many?) cases
there is a perfectly acceptable
explanation for the observed
behavior. For example, in the first
row, the explanation for non-existent
technical debate is that everyone
simply agrees with the proposal on the
floor.

Perhaps there should be
two explanation columns; one for
'negative' and one for 'normal' or
'positive'.

3) We need to be very
careful not to hinder positive
consensus building behaviors that
naturally occur outside formal meeting
time. In my opinion, as long as the
group of individuals working on
building consensus are open and
transparent in their activities, it
probably is OK. If we produce a
'signs/evidence of dominance'
document, we should also produce a
'mechanisms for constructive consensus
building'